


(subject to change)

by acetheticallyy (patrickcorbins)



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Canon Compliant, Getting Together, M/M, Pining, Post-Canon, Touch-Starved
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-04
Updated: 2019-06-04
Packaged: 2020-04-08 00:34:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,397
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19096135
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/patrickcorbins/pseuds/acetheticallyy
Summary: It isn’t that anything bad is going to happen to him should he do it—quite the opposite, in fact. But something bad might happen to someone else, someone he rather cares for a great deal, and that’s the part that has him stuck.





	(subject to change)

**Author's Note:**

> robin said touch starved crowley, I said crowley not actually being a bad dude and failing to admit it + pining. this was the result! also idk if fire lanes exist in london/if they’re called something different but I really did try to check for all of five minutes and when I couldn’t find anything I just left it so when u get to that part please just accept it
> 
> anyway it should also be noted that I haven’t read the book in five years and didn’t start my reread until halfway through writing this so in my head it works equally for book AND tv verse but it very well may only work for tv verse, who can never be sure. I will say it’s post-canon, so it’s unspecific enough that it might not matter either way. in any case, I hope u like it!

It wasn’t so much something he needed as it was something that he wanted in a way that made it _feel_ like it was something that he needed. Now, he didn’t quite put any stock in feelings nowadays, but he was also never someone who particularly had any problem denying themselves what they wanted, either. Normally it was easy. Normally there was no vague ache thrumming through his chest as he debated whether or not he _could_ , whether or not he was allowed. Normally he didn’t quite give a damn whether or not he would be allowed to do what he wanted, but, well. Tragically, he had to admit to himself that maybe this wasn’t something that could be solved all that simply, at least not this time.

You see, usually the only limiting factor in getting what he wants is the vague displeasure of a few surrounding people and that’s not exactly all that much of a hardship, in itself. He wants to get somewhere quick, so he speeds and he double parks and he maybe takes up the entire fire lane, and a few people perhaps get road rage and that road rage perhaps morphs into a general anger throughout the day that those few people inflict on their coworkers, their friends, their employees. It doesn’t bother him. General mayhem is part of the job description, after all.

In this case, however, it would seem that the limiting factor is _himself_ , and isn’t that just impossible for him to wrap his head around.

Because, you see, it isn’t that anything _bad_ is going to happen to him should he do it—quite the opposite, in fact. But something bad might happen to _someone else_ , someone he rather cares for a great deal, and that’s the part that has him stuck. He shouldn’t care so much that it’s a selfish want, nearly all of his wants are selfish, but this selfish want in particular has the terrible side effect of potentially hurting the only person he’s ever, well…the only person he’s ever _loved_ , if he’s capable of such an emotion.

He thinks he might be, thinks he _has_ to be, or else how could he be in such a predicament. The only reasonable explanation, surely, is that some meddling little emotion has wormed its way into his metaphorical heart and staked its claim on him. Coming to terms with this fact…well, it wasn’t as hard as he might have expected it to be. It was _easy_ , actually, as easy as anything with the angel ever is. That is to say, as easy as breathing.

Or as easy as not breathing, as it were, considering Crowley tended to forget to breathe half the time because it wasn’t a strictly necessary activity, aside from keeping up appearances, so as it happens it’s actually a lot easier to just…not breathe at all.

And while realizing he’s in love may be as easy as breathing-or-not-breathing, actually _being_ in love is much harder than any of the movies would have you believe. It’s not a montage of dates on café patios and literal walks in the park, it’s a deep, steady ache that starts up in your chest and slowly radiates outward until it’s covering every available surface of your body, internal and external, celestial or otherwise.

And Crowley is not in the business of feeling sorry for himself—it seems like it would be a waste of time, if he’s being honest—but even he has to think that it’s more than a little unfair that his personal predicament has to be even _harder_ than all that, the all encompassing ache and the like. Because it’s not just that, it’s not just the strike through the chest. It’s that and it’s the terrifying thought that he is a _demon_ and Aziraphale is an _angel_ and it doesn’t take a theologist to understand the potential for disaster there.

It’s not even that they can’t _be_ together, because they’ve been doing that for thousands of years, really, when you think about it. The _being_ together part is easy, except for the fact that they both could have very nearly died for it if it weren’t for a few helpful words and quick thinking on their part, but the being _together_ part has completely separate consequences. Very nearly dying for being friends and trying and succeeding to stop the apocalypse was, in the grand scheme of things, not so bad. They’d had a fair warning, they’d come up with a plan, and if push came to shove they could do it again. But the completely separate consequences, however. Well, those included things like _falling_ and losing your home and your life and your _name_ , everything that makes you _you_ , except you have to keep living even knowing everything you had before is gone and won’t ever come back.

Crowley had done it before, after all, in a particularly unadvisable fit of boredom, and look where it’s gotten him. In love with an angel and not able to do anything thing about it, because Someone help him, he actually _cares_. He cares what happens to Aziraphale and he can’t be the reason _this_ happens to him, even if it would please Crowley a great deal to just go ahead and do it anyway.

Because the thing is, even if it _would_ please him a great deal to just go ahead and do it anyway, there was still the guilt to live with and he hadn’t quite experienced that yet, never had to, but he supposed if he’d found himself capable of love then he could surely find himself capable of guilt just as well and he wasn’t quite perceptive to trying out that emotion in particular. Love itself was already rather prickly, he couldn’t imagine something that sounded as thick and sticky as _guilt_ would be any better.

It’s rather started to look like _love_ might be one of those things Heaven invented as punishment, because where Crowley is standing it doesn’t look like it has any rewarding outcomes. Why in _Anybody’s_ name would this be something that a person would willingly _choose_ to put themselves through? Forget shutting down every phone line in London, maybe Crowley should’ve dabbled more in making humans fall in love; it looked to be a more sustainable form of general mayhem.

So. They can _be_ together, but they can’t be _together_ , and this is all to say, of course, that as un hell-like as this is likely going to sound, Crowley could do with a little bit more _touch_ in the relationship. And not just the casual brushing of arms on occasion, or the enthusiastic claps on the shoulders when one of them does something particularly brilliant and they can’t quite help themselves. He’s loath to admit it, but he wants something a titch more _meaningful_ than all that.

He can’t very well do that, because of aforementioned completely separate consequences, but for Someone’s sake is it too much to ask to be _held_ once in a while—to be able to participate in something as simple as the experience  of being touched, ever-so-gently, by someone you love. Something to alleviate the deep, steady ache that is love just a little bit, just for a moment. It’s nice to dream, in any case.

The whole thing comes to a head on Sunday, of all days, during a long-standing lunch date that has been in effect for a decade or two, give or take a few millennia.

It’s rather innocent, as most lunch dates are, or at least it starts that way, and actually it _stays_ that way, Crowley just finds himself to be more than a little preoccupied at the moment. He’s made his peace with it mostly, sort of, the whole _touching_ thing. It still aches, bone deep, but no more than it would if he had suddenly found himself responsible for the fall of his best friend—his only friend, in fact, and he’d be hard-pressed to admit it, but he’d also be hard-pressed to admit that he was in love, and both of these facts about Crowley were readily recognized by anyone with a pair of eyes, so really what did it matter what he wanted to admit, anyway.

Anyway, they’re out to lunch and Crowley may or may not be spacing out a little, due to aforementioned preoccupations. This is when a hand comes down on his own—presumably to get his attention, or just because Aziraphale’s never quite been as careful about things as he likes to think. In any case, it makes him flinch a little, snatching his hand back like he’s been burned somehow. Aziraphale makes a face that can only be interpreted as meaning _what the hell_ , even though he’d probably never say it out loud.

It’s a fair enough face to make. Thousands of years of friendship and Crowley had never reacted like this before. Call it the not-end-of-the-world, call it a critical case of transient global amnesia. Whatever it was, it’s caused him to forget himself.

And he had been doing so _well_ for the past six millennia. A pity.

He tries to blow past it. “Sorry, what was that—”

“Are you alright?”

Blowing past it doesn’t work, evidently. He tries denial next. “Yeah, fine, all fine, are uh…are you alright?” He’s barely able to stop himself from cringing, at that. _Of_ course _he’s alright, he’s not the one acting like a complete mental case you absolute_ idiot.

The denial doesn’t work either. Aziraphale is still staring at him with barely concealed concern, tinged with just a hint of something else. If Crowley were to hazard a guess, he might say it looked a lot like _fear_ , but all the same he isn’t quite sure why it would be there.

Once again a hand reaches out for him and once again he pulls back without thinking. “Crowley—”

“It’s alright angel.” Maybe a staunch refusal to acknowledge and/or talk about what’s happening will work better.

It doesn’t.

“Do you not…want me to touch you?” There’s a hurt there that Crowley pretends to ignore. This is how he figures out what _guilt_ feels like, and isn’t it just a trip that he’d done this whole thing to avoid the guilt in the first place but here it is anyway, rearing its ugly, unwelcome head.

He tries not to show all that when he speaks. It’s easier said than done, but he thinks he manages just the same. “Not sure why you’d want to anyway.” It’s not a coincidence that he doesn’t answer the question proper. He never could lie to Aziraphale, at least not with any sort of accuracy or accomplishment.

Aziraphale straightens up a little, then. “Well I suppose this isn’t quite how I envisioned telling you, but all the same.” He reaches out on impulse but stops himself just before contact. “I do find myself quite…taken by you.”

It’s silent for a moment. Crowley figures he must have heard wrong. “I’m sorry?”

A small, sad smile turns up at the corner of Aziraphale’s lips. “You’ve never been half so bad as you think, you know. I mean I know it’s your job, but…well you’ve always seemed to do your best to make sure nothing _too_ terrible happened. And you’ve never given _me_ anything disastrous. I’ve always been grateful for that.” There’s a look in his eyes then that does Crowley right in. Like he _means_ it, like it all comes so easy to him that he can’t imagine a world where this isn’t how it all goes. Like he doesn’t understand what all this might mean. Or worse, like he understands exactly what this all might mean and doesn’t have a care in the world otherwise. It all forms into a lump in Crowley’s throat and settles in deep.

This time when the touch comes Crowley welcomes it. It’s a selfish comfort he allows himself in the moment. “I can’t—I don’t…I don’t deserve all this.” What he means is _you_ don’t deserve all this, but he’s never been great at vulnerability and _feelings_ —tried it out once or twice and found it just didn’t sit right in his stomach—so he leaves it at just that.

There’s a tilt to Aziraphale’s head that says that he’s just as amused by this as he is saddened. “Why not?” Crowley doesn’t have an answer for that, at least not one that doesn’t end in about seven different existential crises, so he just shrugs. “You know,” Aziraphale says, “I think it might be just the contrary, actually. I believe I do find myself to be the one who is rather undeserving here.”

If love is a radiating ache through his body and guilt is a sticky lump in his throat, this is something else entirely. _Melancholia_ , maybe. It’s a bit dramatic, he supposes, but it’s the only thing he has to explain the sudden heavy weight dripping down his shoulders. It’s like being plunged into ice water, frozen in place and gasping for air while you struggle to get free and you’re weighed down by nothing but the cold and your own paralyzing fear. It might be the worst of them all.

“You don’t mean that,” Crowley insists. He’s trying to keep his head in all this, to remind himself why he’s doing it—or _not_ doing it, as it were—but Aziraphale had to go and make it _difficult_ , as if it weren’t already as frustratingly terrible as it needed to be. Moreso, in fact. “I’m afraid you might be looking at everything backwards. You’re an _angel_ , angel. I’m not.”

“But you were, once.” Crowley doesn’t know how to respond to that, so he doesn’t. “And besides. I may be an angel, but you, my dear, are more heavenly than any angel could ever wish to be.”

It should be something that he swiftly and readily denies—no one in their right mind should ever describe him as _heavenly_ , and he’d thank them to remember that. At present moment, however, he can’t quite find a reason to.

He does manage to find a reason to change the subject, however, as _this_ reason happens to be _the_ reason. The reason none of this can stand to happen, that is.

“Do you have… _any_ sort of self-preservation at all?” He doesn’t mean to sound so mean about it, but perhaps that’s what the situation calls for. Certainly nothing else has worked yet, in any case, so it must be worth a shot.

If Aziraphale notices the livewire of irritation that barely veils the undercurrent of worry in the words, he graciously decides not to comment. Instead, he says, “I’m not quite sure what you mean by that, I’m afraid.”

Crowley lets out a slight, frustrated laugh at that. Of _course_ he wouldn’t. Why would it have even come up as a consideration, it was only a complete and total obliteration of his world as he knew it.

Well, Crowley supposes, he’s tried everything else. Might as well come out with it. “You…have you even _thought_ about what this might mean for you?” he asks. And, because there’s no use skirting the issue anymore, “Falling? Have you even considered that?” Aziraphale looks like he might want to get a word in, but Crowley doesn’t want to let him, considering. The whole thing is hard enough as it is. “I can’t do that to you. I _won’t_. And maybe I am too _nice_ —” his mouth curls uncomfortably around the word “—because every time I so much as _think_ about it I…well I suppose I feel guilty for even thinking about it. So yeah,” he says, “I suppose you’re right. You _don’t_ deserve it.”

Aziraphale seems to have missed the entire point of the whole speech. “Oh, _that_ ,” he says dismissively.

“Yes oh, _that_ ,” Crowley shouts, barely remembering he’s still in a restaurant until someone else looks his way at the outburst. “That’s the whole point! That’s the whole _reason_ I haven’t—” he cuts himself off just before the admission. There’s no reason to give Aziraphale more incentive to turn a blind eye to the whole situation.

Nevertheless, he presses the issue. Because of course he does. Because he’s an _idiot_. A wonderful idiot, one that Crowley still unfortunately finds himself loving despite the horrible self-preservation instincts that have been brought forth, but an idiot nonetheless. “Haven’t what, my dear?”

Well. Might as well go for broke. “The whole reason I haven’t…said anything myself.” He might hope that the confession was quiet enough to remain unheard, but he supposes it’s too much to hope for, if the way Aziraphale’s face lights up is any indication.

“Oh, good! I was rather worried this whole thing was a way to, er…let me down gently, as they say. Glad to see it isn’t.”

Crowley deflates. “Nah.” He drags out the word, scrunches up his face like it hurts him to say. “How could I not? And anyway, do you really think I’d stick around you in that horrible coat of yours for the greater part of two centuries if I weren’t hopelessly in love with you from the beginning? Come on.”

Aziraphale looks like he’s just won the whole world, but Crowley still hasn’t forgotten the big, overarching problem. “Not that it matters much anyway, I suppose,” he says. “Still haven’t changed my mind on the whole not wanting to be your downfall thing.”

Sometimes it’s hard to remember that Aziraphale is an angel, with the mean streak he has hidden deep down. This is one of those times. “Oh, for Heaven’s sake,” he says, rolling his eyes, “will you get over that already? I swear, it’s like you _want_ to be miserable sometimes.” If Crowley wanted to be miserable, he’s sure he wouldn’t have stayed on Earth instead of going back to doing his work from the bowels of Hell, but he doesn’t say that. “Besides,” Aziraphale continues, “I should hardly think something like this is worth either of them getting in such a twist over. And really, my dear, who’s to say that _I_ wouldn’t just as easily be the one dragging _you_ up with me? You’re much closer to that than I am to falling, if you consider everything.”

And, well, okay… _maybe_ Aziraphale has a point. But that still doesn’t mean that he’s willing to—

“You’re not going to _do_ anything,” Aziraphale insists, and Crowley would think he was reading his mind if it weren’t for that fact that Aziraphale had assured him once before that angels can’t actually do that, and Crowley trusts Aziraphale implicitly. “This is just as much my choice as it is yours, and even if something should happen to me, which I highly doubt it will, I’ve already considered the implications and have decided that it doesn’t quite matter to me either way. Not much use in maintaining my allegiances if I can’t have you with me.” And the final nail in the coffin: “ _You’ve_ managed for this long. Don’t think I don’t know your fall wasn’t just as much of an accident. I’m sure I’m just as capable of surviving with most of my morals intact just as you have, if it should come to that.”

The hand on top of Crowley’s shifts a little, turning to curl around his own. He finds his own hand curl involuntarily, fingers twining together. He makes a conscious effort not to stop himself when he realizes, and the warmth in Aziraphale’s eyes when he allows it to just _be_ is a reward all its own. A thumb strokes gently across the backs of his knuckles and he feels a shiver crawl through his nervous system.

The ache settles a little, then, mellows out into something more akin to the slow burn of a backyard campfire. It crackles a little, in the space where his heart should be. He’s still not all that sure that what they’re doing is going to end in anything less than disaster, but, well, they haven’t been spontaneously set ablaze yet. At any rate, he’s happy, he thinks, and Aziraphale seems to be as well, however miraculous the fact may seem to him. He supposes that’ll just have to be enough, for now.

**Author's Note:**

> now that we've finished all that I want to mention that the bit about "you, my dear, are more heavenly than any angel could ever wish to be" is the direct creative genius of robin themself. they mentioned it when they were helping me brainstorm this fic and I could not in good conscience let it escape the fic proper. it's all about that juxtaposition, baby!
> 
> as always, robin, I owe u my life--thanks for being the best and brightest cheerleader/inspiration of all


End file.
